Carolina: Cruising Past 70

With a traveler’s soul, we just had to find ways to continue going out to breathe clean fresh air. As soon as the lockdown was lifted, we began to consider our car as an extension of our home. It is a place we can keep as clean as we want it to be and allow no one else to come in. So we created a bucket list of places where we could go and practice natural social distancing like the state, regional, and national parks around us that remained open. When we didn’t see people on the trails, we got out of the car and walked a little. If not, we just continued driving.

Going Home and Staying There

Because of coronavirus, we cut short our annual Mazatlan vacation last March by ten days. The statistics were pretty grim when we left Mexico. The US had become the new epicenter, and the Canadian and Mexican borders were closed to non-essential travel. It took us two days, driving eight hours each day to get home. What was surprising was it took us no time at the Mariposa Border on both the Mexico and US sides. There was not the usual inspection done. But what was scary was that there was no testing done.

socially distanced queue at the Visitor Center

But home is the best place to do self-isolation, not on a cruise ship out at sea or a hotel room in a foreign country. We happily completed our 14-day period of self-isolation when the authorities declared a lockdown until the end of April. I wouldn’t say it was welcome news but it was also not a problem. There were a few things we have learned to do to make it a more meaningful pause. And we gradually gracefully adapted to what they have started to call as the new normal.

our Zoom Party, playing Bingo and Trivia, at Viewpoint

It included things like online shopping, grocery pick-ups, substituting ingredients in cooking, exercising with videos, cleaning at new levels, and watching movies on demand. Zoom also exploded, providing online activities to replace physical interactions. I had a one-hour session with my grandkids, ages 4-6, and another one for the two teenagers to help my daughters. There were also meetings with alumni associations and parties with Viewpoint residents. And then, as before, I found another flagship project that made the time more productive. Thus, my second book is in copy-edit mode now, on schedule for an October-November launch.

masked, even while hiking

New Ways of Traveling

The operative principle was to distance ourselves from others, but not from nature. Road trips had become the preferred mode of travel. As a matter of fact, the travel magazine I write for twice a month had started to direct articles to be about road trips in the domestic USA. In the process, we also discovered small Arizona towns that had lots of character. And, because you don’t have to choose hotels or AirBnbs for lodging, RVs had become even more popular. We miss our old RV.

In July, the resurgence of coronavirus cases overwhelmed Arizona just as we had already been terribly missing family. We decided that we could not wait anymore. We thought that we could actually go from our higher-risk home to lower-risk areas near our children in states that accepted us.

Western Idaho didn’t. Alaska and Australia, on the other hand, would necessitate airplane travel which we felt was still too risky. We chose three mountain retreats in Utah, Colorado, and California and invited our children from the latter two to meet with us there. And we just met with another one halfway between Utah and Idaho to meet for a picnic at the Shoshone Falls in the eastern part of Idaho.

New Rules for Interacting with Others

in separate rooms but dining together

foot-operated hand sanitizer dispenser

But since they were not part of our bubble— the people you live with and share daily activities with, like Bill and I are for each other— we developed certain rules to follow when we were with them. Those rules follow the principles of avoiding crowds, social distancing, staying outdoors, hand washing, and the wearing of masks. And these principles were designed because of the simple science behind Covid-19. The number of virus particles we get determines the gravity of the potential infection And the number is influenced by our proximity to the source, the length of exposure to it, and the quality of our immune system. Each one of us can control of all these three factors.

For the foreseeable future, especially when we are still under the threat of viral diseases, we will follow these practices, especially numbers one to five. We can see a time when those rules would be somehow relaxed but we hope we can do away with number six as soon as we can.

1. Go to areas with lower incidences of Covid-19. It is good that there is plenty of data to drill down to even up to zip codes. We have selected restaurants, groceries, mountain retreats, towns, counties, states, in this way.

2. Meet only in uncrowded open-air spaces. Stick to patio seating for eating out, drive-in theaters for watching movies, outdoor services for worship, and hiking at off-the-beaten-path trails as a preferred activity.

3. Do not spend an unreasonably long time with others. They say more than 15 minutes is too long. But, as long as we are masked up and/or are socially distanced to six feet, we have extended this to a maximum of two hours.

digital menus for scanning

4. Do not ride with others in the same vehicle. This makes us stick to our car as our preferred mode of travel. We are currently eliminating planes, ships, and trains as trip options.

5. Do not share rooms with people not in your bubble. We no longer stay in our children’s homes and no longer book multi-bedroom units but keep to separate units. We also stick to our timeshares. As owners, we have an influence on how the property is sanitized and keep to physical safety guidelines.

6. Do not shake hands or hug, although during rare times we touched elbows (with sleeves) or toes (in shoes) for a second.

We canceled our trips in April-May but resumed our travels in July. We intend to still go to Mexico for our annual vacation in January, still driving to Mazatlan. Self-isolation helped flatten the curve for our community and the world when we had to do it. Creative ideas helped us become productive during lockdown. But, with these new rules that we have developed, we have found how to continue to travel and still be safe.